Genre The Western

1. Genre: The Western

2. Genre A category of film, such as the western, the horror film, the costume drama, the melodrama, and so on, with recognizable conventions and character types.

3. Semantic Approach Focus on similarities Fixed meanings What remains constant Syntactic Approach Focus on change and development over time Variable relationships between structured elements

4. Semantic Approach The Western is a film whose action, situated in the American West, is consistent with the atmosphere , the values, and the conditions of existence in the Far West between 1840 and 1900. Syntactic Approach The Western is a genre that results from several overlapping thematic clashes: the West as desert vs. the West as garden; nature vs. culture; the individual vs. community.

5. Semantic Approach Syntactic Approach The semantic approach has explanatory power . The syntactic approach has broad applicability .

6. Semantic Approach The Western hero is typically a nomadic male loner who comes to town, purges it of its savage or criminal elements, and leaves. He is often motivated by revenge and/or a sense of justice. Syntactic Approach How do variations in the Western hero represent changing images of masculinity and changing attitudes toward the history of Western settlement?

7. Conventions Settings Character Types Costumes and Props Plots/Situations Conflicts Themes “Look” – cinematography, mise -en-scene

8. Overlapping Thematic Clashes The West as desert vs. the West as garden Nature vs. culture The individual vs. the community

9. The Western as Myth “ . . . in The Searchers (dir. John Ford, 1956) there is a direct confrontation with the fact that the origin of the territorial U.S. rested on a virulent racism and genocidal war against aboriginal peoples, a war that would not have been possible and perhaps would not have been won without the racist hatred of characters like the John Wayne character.” - Robert B. Pippin, “What Is a Western? Politics and Self-Knowledge in John Ford’s The Searchers, ” Critical Inquiry 35.2 (2009)

10. Repeated Images in The Searchers

11. Marriages on the Border Debbie and Scar Marty and Look Marty and Laurie